We left the beach and walked home, but Walter stayed close to me all the way, only pausing at times to stare into the trees to our left, his teeth slightly bared as though waiting for the approach of some threat as yet unknown.
8
I drove down to Lynn the next morning. The sky was clear and blue, the color of summer, but the deciduous trees were bare, and the workers employed on the never-ending turnpike extension were wrapped in hooded sweaters and wore thick gloves to ward off the cold. I drank coffee on the ride and listened to an album of North African protest music. It drew disapproving looks when I stopped for gas in New Hampshire, where the sound of Clash songs being bellowed in Arabic was clearly regarded as evidence of unpatriotic leanings. The songs kept my mind off the figure glimpsed in the trees at Ferry Beach the night before. The memory of it evoked a curious response, as though I had witnessed something that I was not really meant to see, or had broken some taboo. The strangest part of it was that the figure had seemed almost familiar to me, as if I had at last encountered a distant relative about whom I had heard a great deal but whom I had never before met.
I left the interstate for Route 1, as ugly a stretch of uncontrolled commercial development as could be found anywhere in the Northeast, and then took 107 North, which wasn’t much better, heading through Revere and Saugus toward Lynn. I passed the huge Wheelabrator waste management plant on the right, then GE-Aviation, the big employer in the area. Used car lots and vacant sites dotted the landscape as I entered Lynn, its streetlights adorned with Stars and Stripes banners welcoming all comers, each sponsored by a local business. Eldritch and Associates wasn’t among them, and when I came to their offices it wasn’t hard to see why. It didn’t look like a particularly prosperous operation, occupying the top two floors of an ugly gray building that squatted defiantly on the block like a mongrel dog. Its windows were filthy and nobody had refreshed the gold lettering upon them announcing the presence of a lawyer within in a long, long time. The premises were sandwiched between Tulley’s bar on the right, itself a pretty austere place that appeared to have been built to repel a siege, and some gray-green condos with businesses on the lower level: a nail salon, a store called Angkor Multi Services with signs in Cambodian, and a Mexican restaurant advertising pupusas, tortas, and tacos. At the end of the block was another bar that made Tulley’s look like it had been designed by Gaudi. It was little more than a doorway and a pair of windows, with the name above the entrance painted in jagged white letters by someone who might have been suffering from serious delirium tremens at the time, and who had offered to do the job in return for a hand-steadying drink. It was called Eddys, without the apostrophe. Maybe if they’d called it Steady Eddys they might have gotten away with the sign on ironic grounds.
I wasn’t optimistic about Eldritch and Associates as I parked in Tulley’s lot. In my experience, lawyers didn’t tend to open up much for private investigators, and the previous day’s conversation with Stark hadn’t done much to change my opinion. In fact, now that I thought about it, my encounters with lawyers had been almost uniformly negative. Maybe I just wasn’t meeting enough of them. Then again, maybe I was just meeting too many.
The street-level door of Eldritch’s building was unlocked, and a narrow flight of battered steps led to the upper floors. The yellow wall to the right of the stairs had an extended greasy smear at the level of my upper arm where countless coat sleeves had brushed against it over the years. There was a musty smell that grew stronger the farther up I went. It was the odor of old paper slowly decaying, of dust piled upon dust, of rotting carpet and law cases that had dragged on for decades. It was the stuff of Dickens. Had the problems of Jarndyce and Jarndyce found their way across the Atlantic, they would have enjoyed familiar surroundings in the company of Eldritch and Associates.
I reached a door marked Bathroom on the first landing. Ahead of me, on the second floor, was a frosted-glass door with the firm’s name etched upon it. I climbed on, careful not to place too much faith in the carpet beneath my feet, which was fatally undermined by an absence of enough nails to hold it in position. To my right, a further flight of steps led up into the dimness of the top floor. The carpet there was less worn, but it wasn’t much of a claim.
Out of politeness, I knocked on the glass door before entering. It seemed like the Olde Worlde thing to do. Nobody answered, so I opened the door and went in. There was a low wooden counter to my left. Behind it was a large desk, and behind the large desk was a large woman with a pile of big black hair balanced precariously on her head like dirty ice cream on a cone. She was wearing a bright green blouse with frills at the neck, and a necklace of yellowing imitation pearls. Like everything else there, she looked old, but age had not dimmed her affection for cosmetics or hair dye, even if it had deprived her of some of the skills required to apply both without making the final effect look less like an act of vanity than an act of vandalism. She was smoking a cigarette. Given the amount of paper surrounding her it seemed an almost suicidal act of bravado, as well as indicating an admirable disregard for the law, even for someone who worked for a lawyer.
“Help you?” she said. She had a voice like puppies being strangled, high and gasping.
“I’d like to see Mr. Eldritch,” I said.
“Senior or Junior?”
“Either.”
“Senior’s dead.”
“Junior it is, then.”
“He’s busy. He’s not taking on any new clients. We’re run off our feet already.”
I tried to imagine her even getting to her feet, let alone being run off them, and couldn’t. There was a picture on the wall behind her, but the sunlight had faded it so much that only a hint of a tree was visible in one corner. The walls were yellow, just like those on the stairway, but decades of nicotine accumulation had given them a disturbing brown tint. The ceiling might once have been white, but only a fool would have placed a bet on it. And everywhere there was paper: on the carpet, on the woman’s desk, on a second, unoccupied desk nearby, on the counter, on a pair of old straight-backed chairs that might once have been offered to clients but was now assigned to more pressing storage duties, and on the full-length shelves that stood against the walls. Hell, if they could have found a way to store paper on the ceiling, they probably would have covered that as well. None of the documents looked like they’d been moved much since quills went out of fashion.
“It’s about someone who may be a current client,” I replied. “His name is Merrick.”
She squinted at me through a plume of cigarette smoke.
“Merrick? Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“He’s driving a car registered to this firm.”
“How’d you know it’s one of ours?”
“Well, it was hard to tell at first because it wasn’t filled with paper, but it checked out in the end.”
Her squint grew narrower. I gave her the tag number.
“Merrick,” I said again. I pointed at her phone. “You may want to call someone who isn’t dead.”
“Take a seat,” she said.
I looked around.
“There isn’t one.”
She almost smiled, then thought better about cracking the makeup on her face.
“Guess you’ll have to stand, then.”
I sighed. Here was more proof, if proof were needed, that not all fat people were jolly. Santa Claus had a lot to answer for.
She lifted the receiver and pressed some buttons on her beige phone.
“Name?”
“Parker. Charlie Parker.”
“Like the singer?”
“Saxophonist.”
“Whatever. You got some ID?”
I showed her my license. She looked at it distastefully, like I’d just taken my weenie out and made it do tricks.
“Picture’s old,” she said.
“Lot of stuff’s old,” I replied. “Can’t stay young and beautiful forever.”
She tapped her fingers upon her desk while she waite
d for an answer at the other end of the line. Her nails were painted pink. The color made my teeth hurt. “You sure he didn’t sing?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Huh. So who was the one who sang? He fell out of a window.”
“Chet Baker.”
“Huh.”
She continued drumming her nails.
“You like Chet Baker?” I asked. We were forming a relationship.
“No.”
Or maybe not. Mercifully, somewhere above us a phone was answered.
“Mr. Eldritch, there’s a”—she paused dramatically— “gentleman here to see you. He’s asking about a Mr. Merrick.”
She listened to the answer, nodding. When she hung up she looked even unhappier than before. I think she had been hoping for an order to release the hounds on me.
“You can go up. Second door at the top of the stairs.”
“It’s been a blast,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “You hurry back now.”
I left her, like an overweight Joan of Arc waiting for the pyre to ignite, and went up to the top floor. The second door was already open and a small old man, seventy or more, stood waiting for me. He still had most of his hair, or most of someone’s hair. He wore gray pinstripe trousers and a black jacket over a white shirt and a gray pin-stripe vest. His tie was black silk. He looked vaguely unhappy, like an undertaker who had just mislaid a corpse. A faint patina of dust seemed to have settled upon him, a combination of dandruff and paper fragments, paper mostly. Wrinkled and faded as he was, he might almost have been made of paper himself, slowly crumbling away along with the accumulated detritus of a lifetime in the service of the law.
He stretched out a hand in greeting, and conjured up a smile. Compared to his secretary, it was like being greeted with the keys of the city.
“I’m Thomas Eldritch,” he said. “Please come in.”
His office was tiny. There was paper here too, but less of it. Some of it even looked like it had been moved recently, and box files were stored alphabetically on the shelves, each carefully marked with a set of dates. They went back a very long time. He closed the door behind me and waited for me to sit before he took his own seat at his desk.
“Now,” he said, steepling his hands before him. “What’s this about Mr. Merrick?”
“You know him?”
“I am aware of him. We provided him with a car at the request of one of our clients.”
“Can I ask the name of the client?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Is Mr. Merrick in some kind of trouble?”
“He’s getting there. I’ve been employed by a woman who seems to have attracted Merrick’s attentions. He’s stalking her. He broke a window in her house.”
Eldritch tut-tutted. “Has she informed the police?”
“She has.”
“We’ve heard nothing from them. Surely a complaint of this kind would have made its way back to us by now?”
“The police didn’t get to talk to him. I did. I took the tag number from his car and traced it back to your firm.”
“Very enterprising of you. And now, instead of informing the police, you are here. May I ask why?”
“The lady in question is not convinced that the police can help her.”
“And you can.”
It sounded like a statement, not a question, and I had an uneasy sensation that Eldritch already knew who I was before I arrived. I treated it as a question anyway.
“I’m trying. We may have to involve the police if this situation persists, which I imagine might be embarrassing, or worse, for you and your client.”
“Neither we nor our client are responsible for Mr. Merrick’s behavior, even if what you say is true.”
“The police may not take that view if you’re acting as his personal car rental service.”
“And they’ll get the same reply that I have just given you. We simply provided a car for him at a client’s request, and nothing more.”
“And you can’t tell me anything at all about Merrick?”
“No. I know very little about him, as I’ve said.”
“Do you even know his first name?”
Eldritch considered. His eyes were cunning and bright. It struck me that he was enjoying this.
“I believe it’s Frank.”
“Do you think that ‘Frank’ might have served some time?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.”
“There doesn’t seem to be very much that you can say.”
“I am a lawyer, and therefore a certain degree of discretion is to be expected by my clients. Otherwise, I would not have remained in this profession for as long as I have. If what you say is true, then Mr. Merrick’s actions are to be regretted. Perhaps if your own client were to sit down with him and discuss the matter, then the situation could be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, as I can only assume that Mr. Merrick believes she may be of some assistance to him.”
“In other words, if she tells him what he wants to know, then he’ll go away.”
“It would be logical to assume so. And does she know something?”
I let the question dangle. He was baiting me, and wherever you found bait, you could be pretty certain that there was a hook hidden somewhere within it.
“He seems to think so.”
“Then it would appear to be the natural solution. I’m sure that Mr. Merrick is a reasonable man.”
Eldritch had remained impossibly still throughout our discussions. Only his mouth moved. Even his eyes appeared reluctant to blink. But when he said the word “reasonable” he smiled slightly, imbuing the word with an import that was entirely the opposite of its apparent meaning.
“Have you met Merrick, Mr. Eldritch?”
“I have had that pleasure, yes.”
“He seems to have a lot of anger in him.”
“It may be that he has just cause.”
“I notice that you haven’t asked me the name of the woman who is employing me, which suggests to me that you already know it. In turn, that would seem to indicate that Merrick has been in touch with you.”
“I have spoken to Mr. Merrick, yes.”
“Is he also a client of yours?”
“He was, in a sense. We acted on his behalf in a certain matter. He is a client no longer.”
“And now you’re helping him because one of your other clients has asked you to.”
“That is so.”
“Why is your client interested in Daniel Clay, Mr. Eldritch?”
“My client has no interest in a Daniel Clay.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I will not lie to you, Mr. Parker. If I cannot answer a question, for whatever reason, then I will tell you so, but I will not lie. I will repeat myself: to my knowledge, my client has no interest in any Daniel Clay. Mr. Merrick’s line of inquiry is entirely his own.”
“What about his daughter? Is your client interested in her?”
Eldritch seemed to consider confirming it, then decided against it, but his silence was enough. “I could not possibly say. That is something you would have to discuss with Mr. Merrick.”
My nostrils itched. I could feel the molecules of paper and dust settling in them, as though Eldritch’s office were slowly making me part of itself, so that in years to come a stranger might enter and find us here, Eldritch and me, still batting questions and answers back and forth to no end, a thin layer of white matter covering us as we ourselves dwindled into dust.
“Do you want to know what I think, Mr. Eldritch?”
“What would that be, Mr. Parker?”
“I think Merrick is a dangerous man, and I think somebody has set him on my client. You know who that person is, so maybe you’ll pass on a message for me. You tell him, or her, that I’m very good at what I do, and if anything happens to the woman I’ve been hired to protect, then I’m going to come back here and someone will answer for what has taken place. Am I making myself clear?”
Eldritch’s expression did not alter. He was still smiling benignly like a little wrinkled Buddha.
“Perfectly, Mr. Parker,” he said. “This is purely an observation and nothing more, but it appears to me that you have adopted an adversarial position with regard to Mr. Merrick. Perhaps, if you were to be less confrontational, you might find that you have more in common with him than you think. It may be that you and he share certain common goals.”
“I don’t have a goal, beyond ensuring that no harm comes to the woman in my care.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true, Mr. Parker. You are thinking in the specific, not the general. Mr. Merrick, like you, may be interested in a form of justice.”
“For himself, or for someone else?”
“Have you tried asking him?”
“It didn’t work out so well.”
“Perhaps if you tried without a gun on your belt?”
So Merrick had spoken to him recently. Otherwise, how could Eldritch have known of my confrontation with him, and the gun?
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think I want to meet Merrick unless I have a gun close at hand.”
“That is, of course, your decision. Now, if there’s nothing else . . .”
He stood, walked to the door, and opened it. Clearly, our meeting was at an end. Once more, he extended his hand for me to shake.
“It’s been a pleasure,” he said gravely. In an odd way, he seemed to mean it. “I’m delighted that we’ve had a chance to meet at last. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Would that be from your client as well?” I asked, and for an instant the smile almost slipped, fragile as a crystal glass teetering on the edge of a table. He rescued it, but it was enough. He seemed about to reply, but I answered for him.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You couldn’t possibly say.”
“Precisely,” he replied. “But if it’s any consolation, I expect that you’ll meet him again, in time.”
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